


a toast to the plans we made

by brella



Category: Hyouka & Kotenbu Series
Genre: F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, First Kiss, Fluff, Meet the Family, Romantic Comedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-29
Updated: 2014-10-29
Packaged: 2018-02-23 02:50:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2531357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brella/pseuds/brella
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She wrenches her eyes shut and doubles over and finishes, in an inelegant blurt, “I need you to be my boyfriend!”</p>
            </blockquote>





	a toast to the plans we made

**Author's Note:**

> Lara prompted a "drabble" of Houtarou/Eru fake dating and, uh, I. 
> 
> I'll just cop to the fact that I took some inspiration for the premise from _Summer Wars_. This is my first time writing Hyouka. B-Be gentle?
> 
> Cross-posted to [Tumblr](http://caseyblevins.co.vu/post/101244994470/fic-a-toast-to-the-plans-weve-made).

This is, more or less, how it starts:

“Oreki-san,” Chitanda says, voice as tentatively hopeful as it always is, “I wonder if you could help me with something.”

That is how everything starts. That is how everything will probably end, too, knowing Houtarou’s chances. He thumbs to the next page of the book in his hand, giving nothing away, cheek and chin settled comfortably into his palm.

“I don’t know how much help I’ll be,” he mumbles, without having the faintest idea what the task will actually entail. Call it intuition, not self-deprecation. He is normally not a very helpful person, whether by principle or by some nascent inability to be of any considerable use.

“I’m absolutely sure that you will be a very big help,” Chitanda insists gently, and only then does Houtarou dare to glance over the side of his nose at her and evaluate his chances of getting out of this situation based on the glimmer in her eyes. There is a pang of something all at once painful and pleasant in the center of his chest—they’re almost aglow. “You always are. There’s no one else I would even think to ask!”

She sounds like she means it with every ounce of her. Houtarou sighs. It’s subdued, the way long-suffering sighs often are, so he doesn’t think that Chitanda hears it.

He snaps his book shut after making sure to note the page he’s on and sets it down on the table. Chitanda visibly perks up in his peripheral, tiny smile widening into something indescribably more troublesome.

“All right,” he drones, resigned.

Chitanda brightens. “Thank you,” she says. Houtarou is convinced that he’s the greatest fool this country has ever seen, because only fools of that caliber would feel so accomplished and proud at the sound of those two simple words coming from one simple girl. So caught up in the faint echoes of them still drifting through his memory is he that he doesn’t even notice, right away, the silence that follows them.

When he does, he turns his head slightly to survey her. Her hands are in her lap, pinching and tugging at an out-of-place wrinkle in her skirt, and there are little remnants of purple nail polish on her fingernails. Those colors never last long, with all of the help she provides at home, so Houtarou doesn’t know why she and Ibara bother with it, but it’s not worth saying anything about.

He feels his mouth thin. A fidgeting Chitanda is never a good sign.

“What?” he finally prods her, when it becomes clear that he’ll have to if he wants to get anywhere.

She jumps a little in her seat, fingers freezing mid-fiddle. Slowly, red starts to seep onto her face, filling it up, until Houtarou’s sure it might reach her toes.

“Well,” she replies, and he picks up on her tone of voice right away—embarrassment, “you see, I... I have relatives from Mima who will be visiting soon. For Golden Week. Golden Week, and...” She ducks her head sheepishly. “And my birthday.”

Houtarou confesses himself shocked, even if it only shoots through him briefly. How appropriate for Chitanda—a birthday during Golden Week, of all things. No wonder they’ve never heard word one about her birthday during the school term, save for Ibara, who may as well know everything about Chitanda by this point.

“Ah,” he says, rather than conveying any of this. “That sounds... busy.”

To his surprise, she chuckles at that. “How like you to describe it that way, Oreki-san.”

 _How typically forward of you to say so, Chitanda-san_ , Houtarou thinks but doesn’t say.

Instead, and against his instinct to let the topic wane by any means necessary, he asks, “And you need me for something?”

“Ah!” Chitanda squeaks. Houtarou sees her give a bit of a start in his peripheral, hands springing up to stop near her chest as though he’s just narrowly avoided searing her. “A-Ah, yes, that. Well... you see...” Quietly, she muses, “How to say this...”

Houtarou goes to the trouble of rolling his eyes just slightly, starting to reach for his book again. If Chitanda can’t spit it out, he’s wasting his time sitting there and listening to her chatter.

A hand darts out from beside him and grips his wrist, swift and inescapable, halting him immediately. He is all at once shocked and not shocked when he follows the arm it’s attached to and finds that it belongs to Chitanda.

Chitanda, whose urgent and glowing stare is boring right through his skull. Chitanda, whose fingers are warm and small but impossibly strong. Chitanda, whose whole face is flushed and whose thin lips seem to be wrestling with each other over something. Chitanda, who abruptly tugs his hand closer to her, and him awkwardly with it.

He braces his free hand on the table to keep himself from falling straight into her lap and blinks up at her, a bit annoyed. To think that she thinks she can drag him around like he’s some stubborn old cat!

“Oreki-san,” she says, in the voice he’s sure she may have used for daimyo in a past life, firm and clear with just enough cleverly placed neediness to sway them, “please hear me out.”

 _I could hear you out twelve times in the time this is taking_ , Houtarou thinks bitterly, but what he says aloud is a mulish, “All right.”

“Oreki-san—” There she goes again, starting every sentence like it’s a formal (and undeniable) request. She draws herself up to her full height, releasing his wrist to clench her fists in front of her chest, staring him down resolutely. Houtarou is a bit concerned; Chitanda is usually never this bold. Maybe Ibara has been corrupting her. “Oreki-san, I—!”

She wrenches her eyes shut and doubles over, and finishes, in an inelegant blurt, “ _I need you to be my boyfriend_!”

 

* * *

 

 

True shock—petrifying, bare, gobsmacked and all-consuming (or maybe all-emptying)—is something that Houtarou has never experienced. It is a feeling too big for the reserved heart he has built for himself. It is exhausting and difficult to grapple with and altogether an unworthy expenditure of energy.

And yet.

 

* * *

 

 

“Ch-Chitanda-san!” he hears himself say, forcing a shaky smile that probably makes him look more nauseous than pleasant. “Wh-What day during Golden Week did you say your birthday was?”

Chitanda stays frozen in that earth-shaking pose for only a second after he speaks, then blinks, and all of it is gone. It is clearly not the answer she had expected. Her posture loosens. Her hands drop a little. She gapes as much as she can at him while still being polite.

“It...” She blinks again, rapidly this time, one set of fingers coming to hover at her chin. “It’s... May 4. Greenery Day.”

“Ah, I would have guessed Shōwa Day,” Houtarou comments. He has no idea where these words are coming from. Perhaps Satoshi has instilled in him a capacity for escapist blithering, to be used only during emergencies such as these. “Interesting. I suppose Greenery Day is appropriate, too.”

“O-Oreki-san...?” Chitanda murmurs, staring blankly at him as he instinctively stands and starts to pack up his things. The emptiness in her voice would break a heart of lesser stuff.

He puts his book in the wrong pocket of his bag, a critical slip-up, but there’s no way she could know that.

“I’m going home,” he announces, no longer bothering to try feigning pleasantries; he’s occupied now, instead, by the fact that his right hand seems to be intent on trembling and won’t stop no matter how much he wills it to. He can’t let Chitanda see such a thing. It would pique her curiosity. “Sorry for asking about your birthday; I was just—“ This is his ace in the hole. “Curious.”

“That...” Chitanda’s words keep breaking softly off into smaller, quieter things. He doesn’t know why it hurts something held deep inside of his chest. “That’s all right. I’m—” Her smile wobbles. “I’m glad when things make you curious.”

Houtarou feels his cheeks warm up and cannot fathom why. He has to get out of here. Quickly. Maybe he had misheard Chitanda. Maybe it had been a spontaneous hallucination, a fever dream. Maybe he isn’t used to the spring warmth yet. He needs to lie down. He needs to—

He takes one step toward the door, then two more, slinging his bag over his shoulder, calling out the usual parting words to Chitanda. The sun is halfway through setting, making everything outside an ethereal sort of pink. Rose-colored.

He needs to get out of here.

He makes it one more step before Chitanda stops him.

She had done this once before. He remembers it well, remembers the tears gathering in her eyes and the way the sight had made something inside him suddenly fold in on itself and give out, dropping painful things all the way down into his stomach. Her arms had been spread wide and her head bowed and he had stopped her from leaving, and he had thought for an instant, from the way she’d looked at him, that she hated him, that he had broken everything, and it had terrified him how much such a thing had actually bothered him to think about.

“Oreki-san,” she says to the floor.

“Yes?” The word snags on something in his throat, and it leaves him feeling uncomfortable.

“Please hear me out,” Chitanda whispers. “I... as I said... there’s no one else I would even think to ask. Please. Please let me explain.”

Houtarou feels something shifting, something large and meaningful and far beyond his control. He can do nothing to stop it; he just stands there, hands in his pockets, vaguely compelled by how still Chitanda’s body is, by how she still hasn’t looked him in the eye.

“To even suggest—” She gulps, outstretched fingers curling into weak fists. “To even say such a thing, I... I _know_ you can’t think I would say it lightly. You know me better than that, right, Oreki-san?”

“I suppose,” Houtarou mumbles without thinking on it, which makes it feel altogether less like a supposition than it should—but how self-absorbed of him, to think that he even remotely understands the Classics Club’s greatest mystery, the one none of them have ever thought to try solving.

“Then you know—!” She finally lifts her head, sharply, riveting her adamant eyes onto his. He resists the urge to take a step back—he’s rarely seen her so serious. “Then you know I wouldn’t say such things unless I—!”

Houtarou can’t explain how, but he knows what she’s trying to get at. Chitanda is a respectable girl from a respectable family and respectable girls don’t go around throwing their fragile hearts hither and yon with no regard for them. Of course there must be some logical reason why Chitanda would say something like the thing that had all but shut him down. She can’t have actually meant it.

He doesn’t know why this realization, this acceptance, settles ponderously in the pit of his stomach and sours it. He lets his shoulders slacken and sighs in defeat.

“I know,” he affirms. He’s the one bowing his head now, frowning dully at a spot of paint on one of the floorboards. It’s green.

Chitanda’s breath comes out of her airily, the way a spring breeze might come down over the mountains. It’s the only thing he can hear outside of the thud and silence of his own heart.

“Oreki-san, my...” She starts to wring her hands, and Houtarou feels a bit bad that he’s now forced her to have this discussion with him standing up near a door, rather than at a table, facing each other, like adults. “My relatives expect a suitor of me. My parents have been more understanding—I know that they’ve been trying to shelter me from hearing about it—but I’m turning seventeen next month and they... my relatives—they have voiced their concern for the longevity of the Chitanda family. They have been harrassing my mother and father about it in their own subtle ways, and I know that if I don’t placate them soon, the already-existing tensions...”

She bites her lip. Houtarou is mesmerized by the sight for a moment, but then gets a grip on himself. Good grief. Noticing such things at a time like this.

“I don’t like tensions among family, Oreki-san,” Chitanda exclaims. Her expression and her voice are so earnest that they would break Houtarou’s heart if it was capable of being rattled. “I find them—feudal, at best. I know that it’s starting to wear on my mother and father. This all may sound quite silly to you, but there are expectations of me as the future head of the Chitanda family. I must give them no further reason to doubt us. If I can make them think when they visit that I...” She blushes. “ _Have someone_... even if I actually don’t, they won’t concern themselves with the matter any further.” She looks him in the eye, hesitant, afraid, a dozen other things he would never want to see from her. “Do you understand?”

Houtarou understands. He’s not a blabbermouth like Satoshi, and he has no personal connection to any of her family members like other acquaintances of hers may. He’s low-maintenance, reserved, and not prone to gossip—the perfect liar.

He nods his assent, unable to fathom any words. Chitanda’s eyes widen just barely, and he can see a glow growing in the very back of them, the sky’s most precious and distant stars coming out through the darkness.

“Then...” She steps closer to him, only a bit, and does something that throws him—she clasps his hands in hers and lifts them up to chest level. “Then... you’ll do it?”

Houtarou glances away from her, hoping that the classroom is dim enough now that she can’t see the heat in his cheeks. “Well, I was just going to spend Golden Week watching TV specials anyway...”

Truth be told, he expects Chitanda to exhibit the usual exuberant reaction that she does when he agrees to participate in her escapades—a lighting up of the eyes, a cheerful gasp, a string of excited thank-yous... an explosion of energy that dazzles him.

Instead, she softens, lowering their hands as one, and smiles gratefully, knowingly, up at him. He feels a bit dizzy. He needs to sit down. But, no—Chitanda, giving his fingers the smallest squeeze, is holding him up. Maybe such a subdued response, such a multitude of unreadable things swimming in her protuberant eyes, is a testament to how much she’s grown in the school year since he’d met her.

“Thank you, Oreki-san,” she murmurs, and Houtarou thinks, wildly, stupidly, that this would be the part in any movie where she stands up on her tiptoes and sets her lips softly, softly, on his cheek, for two heartbeats too long, but she does no such thing. She jostles his hands gently before releasing them, and links her own behind her back, and says again, quieter still this time, “Thank you.”

“Whatever,” he mumbles over the roaring of life in his chest, but then, making sure to look at the line of books in the glass bookcase instead of her face, he appends, “You’re welcome.”

“It will require very little energy of you,” Chitanda adds, even though he has already accepted her.

Now it’s Houtarou’s turn to say thank you.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Houtarou realizes very quickly that he should have evaluated this further. Relationships, false or not, involve things like being on a first-name basis and engaging in casual physical contact and, among other things, behaving as though you are in a relationship. Such things are so beyond him as to seem in the ionosphere.

“Try it again,” Chitanda—no, Eru, now, says, giving him an encouraging nod. She stirs her whipped cream-laden cup of tea with gusto. “Go on.”

Houtarou sighs until it spreads out over the whole tea shop, hoping that it will sigh the life out of him so that he may pass on to the next world and never have to deal with such things again. No, no, knowing his luck, he would be reincarnated, someday, to be an unsuspecting raccoon in the forest through which another Chitanda will wander.

“E—” He struggles so valiantly. He wishes Satoshi were here to commend him. “E-Eru and I have been together f-for... about a year now.”

Chitanda claps as though he’s just scored a goal, bouncing in her seat. “Very good!”

“Your turn,” Houtarou deadpans. His crumpets look about as appetizing as rocks.

Chitanda settles, resting her hands in her lap, never losing the happy expression on her face. “Houtarou and I met through the Classics Club. It was love at first sight!” She pauses, tapping her chin. “Hm. Perhaps I should come up with a nickname for you, like Mayaka does for Fukube-san? Hou-chan, maybe?”

“I don’t think that’s necessary,” Houtarou grinds out, but he can tell by the sparkle in her eyes that his protests on the matter will henceforth forever fall on deaf ears.

“Hou-chan!” Chitanda squeals, testing it out. She lets out a little jump of laughter afterwards. “It’s... kind of cute.”

“It is no such thing!” Houtarou protests, wounded by the diminutive. “It’s demeaning.”

“Ah, but what is love if not demeaning?” Chitanda says wistfully. Houtarou can't be sure, but she sounds like she might be... joking around. “For what else could break away your pretenses, draw out the truest soul beneath...”

“Now you just sound like Satoshi,” Houtarou grumbles.

Chitanda giggles behind her hand at that. “I do, don’t I?”

“What else?” Houtarou asks, tortured. “What else do I have to lie about?”

Chitanda’s upturned lips slip into a line altogether more serious. “Houtarou, don’t think of it as lying. It’s only for a few days.”

Houtarou lets out an inward _tch_. The charade hasn’t even _begun_ yet and she’s already addressing him by first name! She certainly had no trouble with _that_! He can barely wrestle hers out of him without needing to drop his reddening face into his hands.

(And don’t even remind him of how he had reacted when she had casually set her head on his shoulder in the clubroom the previous evening, just to see, as she’d hastily explained, what it would feel like.)

He had been under the impression when she had first proposed this to him that the act would only be required for, maybe, a party, or a dinner, or any other one-day-only event, but Chitanda has apparently arranged it so that he has been invited to stay with them for the entirety of Golden Week. It makes no real difference to him, as his parents are out of town and Tomoe is... wherever she is; Mars by now, probably... but to stay with the Chitandas, to live with the Chitandas, to occupy the same space as the Chitandas—it all seems so overwhelming, an entire unwelcome tsunami of risks and drawbacks, all of which involve him irreparably embarrassing himself in front of a highly regarded family. He had met a few of them at Sekitani Jun’s funeral, but remembers few (the tears slipping down Chitanda’s face had blinded him to all other things, all other fragments of the world), and that had been a quiet occasion, and he had only stayed for as long as Chitanda had wished him to. This is a situation entirely different.

Chitanda is ruthless. She had waited until it was too late for him to back out to tell him.

“There’s plenty of room,” she had said, waving her hands as if to stave off the glare he’d been shooting straight at her. “Our house is very large, and I’ve arranged it so that you’re sleeping in the farthest room, where no one will bother you...”

That had tempted him. A private cave, hidden away from prying eyes. He could read as much as he wanted. He had surrendered. There had been little fight at all, as was his prerogative.

Now, they’re practicing the whole cock-and-bull story that Chitanda has concocted (with surprising detail and aplomb that Houtarou does not see fit to inquire about) about how they met on that first day in the geography prep room and instantly fell in love, dancing respectably around courtship for a time before they began dating the previous May. Chitanda had not wished to reveal their relationship at Sekitani Jun’s funeral out of respect, nor at the Doll Festival, due to the setbacks that occurred. Sensible lies.

Houtarou is apparently quite taken with her. This is a detail she makes sure to regularly reiterate.

“I don’t want you to forget, Houtarou,” she’ll say, wagging her finger at him. “If you’re not convincing, it will all be for nothing. Remember, you’re in love with me. You lie awake at night thinking about it!”

“I do?” Houtarou will drone back, staring out the nearest window and seriously weighing the pros and cons of jumping out of it. “That seems like a waste. I’d rather sleep.”

“Oreki-san!” she scolds him indignantly this time, and he smirks. A regression.

“Sorry,” he grunts, but he does mean it. “I’m just not a very good liar.”

“That’s all right,” Chitanda reassures him. Her hair is tied up in a ponytail with a big scrunchie, and she has foregone the sweaters and tights of midwinter, having now transitioned into a loose blouse and long green skirt. “You’ll get the hang of it!”

She says it with such encouragement, like she’s voicing her faith in his ability to save the world rather than tell bald-faced lies to her esteemed extended and immediate family. He supposes he should be touched. He isn’t.

He feels a little ill.

“You do?” All at once, Chitanda’s entire demeanor is worry. He hadn’t realized that he’d said it out loud. “Houtarou, don’t be nervous. I’ll be right there by your side.”

“Thanks, Chitanda,” he mutters, a reflex.

“Eru,” she corrects him. His eyes dart up from his untouched tea to see that she’s grinning at him.

He sighs again. He’s certainly been doing a lot of that lately.

“Eru,” he revises. It’s much easier that time, strangely.

 

* * *

 

 

The most difficult part of it all, at first, is ferreting information about the whole plan away from Satoshi. Houtarou stands by his belief that he will never meet a human more dogged than Chitanda, but where she is an energetic hound, Satoshi is a curious fox.

Ibara is a disdainful Persian cat, only becoming involved when she is directly bothered by not knowing.

“You two are conniving,” she says mutinously on the last day before Golden Week begins. The narrow-eyed glower she’s been scrutinizing Houtarou under for days may as well be exuding a hundred curses on his family. “You’re up to something. Chii-chan, has Houtarou done something to you? Did he take your parents hostage?”

“We’re not up to anything,” Chitanda insists with a guileless smile. “Mayaka-san, what are your plans for Golden Week?”

A dexterous change in topic. Houtarou silently cites himself as impressed, turning another page of his book. The murderer is about to be revealed.

“Yes, Mayaka, what are your plans?” Satoshi parrots, leaning closer to Ibara with a wide, unashamed grin.

Ibara flares indignantly and shoves him away by the face. He doesn’t even protest.

“Nothing especially interesting,” she says haughtily, closing her eyes and folding her arms at her chest. “My family and I are going to Europe.”

“And you’ll bring me back lots of souvenirs, right, Mayaka?” Satoshi persists, bouncing a little in his seat. “You’ll get me a deerstalker hat when you go to London?”

“Mayaka-san!” Chitanda exclaims with a gaping mouth. “That’s so exciting!”

“W-Well, I... I guess I am a little excited...” Ibara confesses sheepishly, glancing down at her knees and propping her chin up on one hand.

“She won’t stop talking about it.” Satoshi is clearly enjoying himself, or maybe he’s just enjoying thinking about Ibara enjoying herself, which Houtarou would describe as touching if he was sensitive to those kinds of things. “On the phone last night, she—“

“Shut up, Fuku-chan!” Ibara snaps.

This is right around where Houtarou stops listening.

He comes back a while later (a faint murmur of Satoshi visiting family in Hokkaido reaches him in between) to the sound of Ibara sneering, “You’ll be stuck around here with Oreki, won’t you, Chii-chan? You poor thing.” Houtarou is beyond resenting the implication. “I promise I’ll Skype you every night!”

Chitanda has reached across the table to clasp her hands. They’re both mirroring each other, eyes glimmering with emotion. “That sounds wonderful, Mayaka-san, but don’t go out of your way on my account! You should be enjoying the sights!”

“Mayaka really _is_ excited,” Satoshi tells Houtarou, sounding all at once giddy and like he’s trying to settle something, as though the knowledge of her hidden excitement is a testament to how great of a boyfriend he is.

“Hm,” Houtarou answers, turning another page. “It’s going to be strange not having you around.”

He supposes that’s as close as he’ll ever come to saying something like, “I’ll miss you.” Satoshi seems to catch on right away, blinking at him for a moment before easing into a lighter smile and patting his shoulder.

“Think of it this way,” he says, raising an arm with enthusiasm. “It’ll give you and Chitanda-san some time to hang out!”

And oh, Houtarou thinks dryly, Satoshi hasn’t the faintest idea.

 

* * *

 

 

After Satoshi and Ibara leave, Houtarou almost thinks that things settle for a while. It’s only a day before he leaves for the Chitandas’, but, peculiarly, that feels like a great preparatory reprieve rather than a period of escalating dread. Chitanda calls him the night before he’s set to bike over, just after it gets dark. Houtarou is a little glad, but he won’t say it—the house always seems so empty around the holidays, as if it will swallow him whole and no one will know the difference.

“I hope packing wasn’t too troublesome?” Chitanda’s voice sounds older and wiser on the phone, a phenomenon Houtarou will never be able to explain.

He’s lying flat on his back, one arm slung across his forehead, sheets bunched up somewhere near his chest, watching the slow turn of the ceiling fan. “Nah.”

“Have your parents already left?”

“Yeah.”

“Oreki-san...” It’s funny. Now, it seems odd to hear her call him that, since that they’ve been spending two weeks privately practicing otherwise. She sounds almost... wisftul.

When she doesn’t add anything further, he prompts her with a questioning grunt.

“I’m just wondering about some things,” she explains. It’s much vaguer than is her usual fare, which concerns Houtarou for unknown and perhaps unknowable reasons.

“Like?” he mutters. He’s cherishing the privilege to speak in monosyllabic sounds before it becomes impossible.

Chitanda’s next words feel like two walls groaning and then tumbling down and crushing him: “Do you suppose that I kissed you first, or that it was the other way around?”

The possibilities surge over the very front of his mind: Chitanda, standing on tiptoes on a snowy day and tugging down his scarf to set her cold, red lips on his; himself, carefully grazing his fingers across her hair to move it and leaning awkwardly down, muting her shallow gasp with his own mouth; maybe the both of them taking the single step off of a shared precipice at the same time, bumping into each other, startled but never even thinking of shying away—closed eyes, lingering hands, a single shooting star instead of fireworks.

He almost throws the phone across the room.

“Or who confessed first?” Chitanda whispers as though she hasn’t noticed his silence. “I can’t really picture it being either of us. Maybe...”

Whatever might have followed it never comes, drifting forever into the realm of unsaid and unheard things.

Houtarou can’t explain why he suddenly wants so badly to chase it.

“I wonder what the moment was,” Chitanda sighs, “when we first fell in love.”

A helicopter whirs by outside, toward the mountains that Ogi-sensei had once wandered so bravely. Houtarou can’t see anything—his arm has slipped down to cover his eyes, and he hasn’t seen fit to move it. He can’t even see fit to breathe.

“Good night,” Chitanda breathes after a time, a distant cloud of hope and regret and pain and comfort, “Houtarou.”

It is only after he’s certain she’s hung up that Houtarou allows himself to shiver.

 

* * *

 

 

The first thing that Houtarou does upon arriving at the Chitanda house is start mentally compiling the familial database he had hoped to get away with avoiding. It’s not usually his area; it’s Satoshi’s, but he does it anyway. The circumstances leave him little choice.

Chitanda’s mother and father are Chitanda Ichirou and Chitanda Kasumi. Chitanda Ichirou’s mother—Chitanda’s grandmother—is Chitanda Hana. All three of them are of few words, which Houtarou appreciates.

Chitanda Kasumi has two older sisters, Sekitani Sakae and Iwamura Yasue. Iwamura Yasue married Iwamura Seiichi, who was Chitanda Ichirou’s best friend at university, and they are the ones who have apparently been voicing their disapproval of Chitanda’s relationship status, so work hard to impress them, Houtarou. Sekitani Sakae married Sekitani Jun, whose name Chitanda advises Houtarou to avoid mentioning (not that he had planned on it anyway).

Chitanda Ichirou also has an elder sister, Matsushita Reiko, wife of Matsushita Daisuke; Chitanda Ichirou’s younger brother, Chitanda Yasushi, resides overseas.

Chitanda’s cousins are the Iwamura twins, Kei and and Kenji, and the Matsushitas’ university-age daughter, Kinue. Then, of course, there are Matsushita Daisuke’s brothers, Goro, Orochi, and Tadao; and Iwamura’s brother, Shun; and Sekitani’s brothers and sisters, Ai, Shin, Hisao, and Yuriko, and all of their wives and husbands and children, and Houtarou’s mounting headache.

“You’ll pick up on it quickly, Houtarou,” Chitanda whispers while she escorts him to the room where he will be staying. “It’s all right if you lose track—even I get confused sometimes!”

“Actually, it’s not as bad as I’d imagined,” Houtarou admits, dwelling briefly on his initial visual, which had been a room brimming with iris-eyed curious people, and which had given him nightmares.

“Ah,” Chitanda replies, sounding unsure. “That’s... good?”

Houtarou had slipped up and called her “Chitanda-san” earlier, but it had gone unnoticed, as her father, mother, and grandmother had all replied in a chorus of, “Yes?”

“It’s still... a lot to take in, though,” Houtarou mutters, eyes trained on the floor. His back is smarting from biking all the way here with his travel bag.

Chitanda’s parents had been as reserved as usual, but just as welcoming, and he’d done his utmost to treat them with the respect they deserved. Chitanda had seemed to appreciate it. (She had not been present when her father had tugged him aside and pleasantly threatened to bury his body in the rice fields where no one would find it should he see fit to cause Chitanda any pain.)

Her grandmother had been an entirely different story. Chitanda Hana, stooped with age, hair in a bun, wearing a yukata, had inspected Houtarou with eyes so tightly squinted as to nearly be closed. He praises himself now for the fact that he hadn’t fidgeted under her steely gaze, although he had been sorely tempted.

“Hmph,” she had said. “Hair all in his face. Does this young man have _eyes_ , Eru, or is he a shirime?”

“I’m sure he must have them somewhere,” Chitanda had bandied back cheerfully.

Houtarou had bristled in horror. She hadn't deflected the shirime comment! 

“I do not trust anyone whose eyes I cannot see,” Chitanda Hana had declared stoutly, stepping closer to Houtarou and craning her neck up to more closely evaluate him. He hadn’t leaned away. “And his complexion! You had better start looking after him, Eru, or he won’t last much longer. I could knock him right over.”

Houtarou had resented the prospect of being knocked over. “I’m sturdier than I look.”

“Heh!” Chitanda Hana had guffawed, wizened cheeks lifting around a keen grin. “Know how to play karuta, Oreki-san?”

Sadly, Houtarou does. Satoshi had gone through a phase in middle school. “Well, a little, but I’m hardly an expert.”

“Good!” Chitanda Hana had shouted, clasping his shoulder and jostling it. Her eyes had finally loosened, and Houtarou had been thrown to discover that he felt as though they were Chitanda’s eyes, gazing cleverly up at him. “By the end of your stay here, then, Oreki-san, you will be! I stake my family on it!”

Chitanda Ichirou had looked legitimately concerned for Houtarou, which had all at once heartened and worried him. “Kaasan, don’t you think that’s a little—”

“That sounds lovely, Baachan,” Chitanda had chirped, bowing, perfectly oblivious to Houtarou’s shell-shocked demeanor. “I’ll show Houtarou to his room now.”

“Shame you didn’t give him the shed!” Chitanda Hana had quipped, laughing heartily at her own joke.

That cackle had followed Houtarou all the way down the several hallways along which Chitanda had led him and is following him still now.

“I really appreciate your patience with all of it,” Chitanda tells him, giving him a soft smile over her shoulder. “You can relax and read for a while now while I help with dinner.”

“A-Ah,” Houtarou stutters, and even though his whole body twinges with pain and begs for repose, he asks, a little stiffly, “I-Is there any way I can help with...”

“No!” It sounds like she’s giving him a scolding, the way she halts in front of a doorway and jabs a finger into his chest. “Don’t even consider it! You’ve only just gotten here; you need to rest! Once you’re adjusted and feeling energetic, we’ll let you know if we need help.”

“Feeling energetic,” Houtarou repeats emptily, staring at the opposite wall. He feels like he’s about to keel right over.

“H-Hm...” Chitanda withdraws her hand, now using it to frame her chin and frown pensively at the ceiling. “Perhaps that wasn’t... the best choice of words...”

“My room?” Houtarou prompts her. He hopes that his blatant exhaustion will pardon the rudeness.

“Oh! Of course!” Chitanda gives a start before fumbling slightly with the sliding screen in the doorway next to them. “This is your room.”

Houtarou tilts forward slightly to survey it. It’s nothing enormous, just the right size, with minimal furnishings and a futon already laid out for him. He doubts that they use it very much.

“I hope you’ll forgive me for setting out the futon,” Chitanda mumbles sheepishly. “I was just worried you’d be tired and wanted you to know that you were welcome to it, and...”

“Thanks,” Houtarou says. With that, he strides in, drops his bags, and lies down, not even noticing that he’s asleep until he’s woken up with a blanket laid out over him that hadn’t been there before.

 

* * *

 

 

Houtarou is being grilled. That is the best way to describe the nature of the barrage of questions and wary examinations being flung his way from all sides of the Chitanda clan. He holds tightly to his bottled sweet green tea throughout all of it, attempting to appear unfazed and sociable when he feels as though every aspect of him is now made of solid rock.

Kinue, Chitanda’s university cousin, isn’t so bad. She insists that Houtarou call her by her first name, and she’s dressed very smartly for such casual clothes. Her hair is cropped close to her head. That's the most he's gleaned, observation-wise. It has been difficult to notice many incidental details throughout an evening of Chitanda calling him “Hou-chan” and linking her arm with his and chattering about how enchanting she thinks his eyes are, but Houtarou had spotted a pair of motorcycle boots in the foyer on his way back from the bathroom and he imagines that they belong to Kinue.

“If you find yourself cornered, call out for me,” she had muttered to him after dinner when the adults had started filing away from the table and into the next room to drink and socialize. “I’ll come and save you.”

“Thank you very much,” Houtarou had replied with a small, automatic bow of the head and shoulders. The gesture had earned him a snort.

“Good grief,” she’d chuckled. “Don’t embarrass yourself.”

Now, though, Kinue has abandoned him. He had spent about twenty minutes surrounded by Chitanda’s numerous aunts, and is now trapped with the remaining one, an iron-eyed gargoyle named Iwamura Yasue, of whom Chitanda is apparently the favorite niece. Chitanda has been by Houtarou’s side through all of it, doing a great deal of the talking, which he appreciates, as keeping up the complex lies she had designed for the two of them seems like it requires a great deal of commitment.

“And this boy is from a respectable family?” Iwamura probes, still inspecting Houtarou through her glasses. Houtarou feels a sudden solidarity with insects under microscopes.

“Oh, yes,” Chitanda answers brightly before Houtarou can even open his mouth. “His sister is a world-traveler! Where did you say Tomoe-san is now, Hou-chan?”

“The,” Houtarou says.

“Budapest! Yes, that’s right!” Chitanda declares, beaming. “She always brings back such fascinating souvenirs, Aunt Yasue. If you’d like anything from anywhere, you just tell us. Hou-chan can write her a letter, and she’ll send something back for you!”

“How nice.” Iwamura sounds mildly convinced. Houtarou doesn’t have the heart to tell her that it will probably be another few months before Tomoe shows her face again.

“And Houtarou is quite intellectually gifted,” Chitanda plows on, reaching over and slipping her hand into Houtarou’s. He valiantly fights back his blush. “He has a superb talent for mysteries.”

Houtarou grimaces. There it goes—his last hope of energy conservation. Good-bye, beautiful creature.

“Mysteries!” Iwamura exclaims. “You don’t say! Oreki-san, it just so happens that my husband is an avid mystery fan himself. A Sherlock Holmes aficionado.”

“Maybe you should have done this with Satoshi instead,” Houtarou whispers out of the corner of his mouth, dryly. Chitanda snorts in a very unladylike way.

“What was that?” Iwamura demands with narrowed eyes.

“Houtarou was just saying how exciting that is,” Chitanda answers. Houtarou is starting to become bewildered by this now. What a forward girl! “Hou-chan, maybe you could go and chat with Uncle Seiichi. I’m sure he’d love to see you demonstrate your skills!”

Houtarou feels as though he should be indignant, being treated like a particularly entertaining circus animal, but something about the prospect of these people being legitimately interested in him seems... appealing. Or, at the very least, better than the alternative.

“Sure,” he concedes. He makes sure to bow slightly to Iwamura. “It was very nice to meet you, Iwamura-san. Thank you for the conversation.”

“Don’t be silly; I’m coming with you, of course,” Iwamura says stoutly, taking another imperious sip of her drink. She reminds him of an older, more emotive Irisu, he realizes. “And such formality! You’ve trained your boy well, Eru.”

“He’s quick to learn,” Chitanda quips. The sweet and cheerful look on her face is such a contrast to the teasing.

Houtarou stiffens. “H-Hey...”

“I’m just joking, Houtarou,” Chitanda tells him, turning her head to give him an unassuming smile. “Come on, let’s go find Uncle Seiichi.”

“We needn’t look far; I’m sure he’s loitering around wherever the drinks are,” Iwamura scoffs, beckoning for them to follow her. “Come, come.”

Houtarou wonders if Chitanda is continuing to hold his hand for show, or simply because she’s forgotten it’s there.

 

* * *

 

 

He had not expected the evening to end like this, but here he is, sequestered in by nearly every one of Chitanda’s relatives, astounding them with his powers of deduction. And yet—who knew that being a circus animal could be so satisfying?

“Eh?! You can tell all that just by looking at my clothes?!” Iwamura Seiichi just about shouts, gawking at him. “Amazing!”

“And the story of the Silk Spider Society!” Iwamura Yasue chimes in. “Truly incredible! I remember hearing the whole tale from Chitanda over the phone, but it’s so much more thrilling coming from the source!”

“Are you the guy who helped unveil the mystery of Hyouka?” Kinue asks, leaning just slightly forward as Houtarou has noticed she does whenever she’s intrigued. “And who came up with the problem of X-san? We’ve all heard a lot about those things; Eru-chan was so dazzled by you.”

“Dazzled?” Houtarou repeats under his breath, glancing aside to where Chitanda is chattering animatedly with the children by the TV set. A few moments ago, she had been on his arm, leaning comfortably into him. He feels a little cold now that she’s gone.

“Don’t act so surprised, lover-boy!” Matsushita Daisuke guffaws, face sake-reddened, clapping Houtarou heartily on the back and effectively smacking the wind straight out of him. “Once our Eru catches onto something, she never lets it go! I suppose it only follows that the same would be true of her love life!”

“Daisuke, you’ll embarrass her,” Matsushita Reiko chides him, but not even her projections of being above her family’s rowdiness can conceal her amusement.

“Oh, she can’t even hear me! So tell us, Oreki-san, what was it that made you fall for our Eru, eh?”

Houtarou’s whole body seizes up. The tension is all originating from the lump that has now formed in his throat, chuffing off any hope of words. He manages to get out a croaking noise.

He doesn’t think he’s ever been such a puzzling combination of embarrassed and exhilarated in his life. Perhaps, he thinks, obliquely, lies are just a fancier way of telling the truth.

“Oh, Dad, please,” Kinue, bless her, bless her for a thousand years, interjects, grabbing her father’s shoulders and steering him toward the dining room. “Come on, let’s get you some water.”

“Oreki-san, I find you quite charming,” Sekitani Sakae says warmly. Every time that Houtarou has seen her, she’s been wearing black, but there are lapis lazuli stones in her earrings tonight.

“I do, too!” proclaims Chitanda’s aunt Yuriko. “Rei-san, what do you think?”

Matsushita Reiko’s eyes are closed, giving nothing away. “I think he’s a good match for our Eru.”

Houtarou, though, has been steadily keeping his attention on Chitanda Kasumi. She’s a beautiful woman, long tresses and celestial eyes and a distinguished way of carrying herself, but surprisingly gentle and good-hearted, working tirelessly to make Houtarou comfortable even under the scrutiny of her family.

She nods, once, and Houtarou could swear that she looks proud of him. “A very good match indeed.”

“Then we’re all agreed,” Yuriko-san cries, raising her cup of sake jovially. “Oreki-san has passed the test with the women of the family! Banzai!”

They do three cheers for him, and everything. It’s really a bit much, but he feels irrationally, needlessly happy.

“Th-Thank you,” he flummoxes.

He may have spoken a bit too soon. The moment the last syllable leaves him, he realizes that Chitanda Hana has been standing a few feet to his right all this time, hands folded on the knot of her cane, eyes flicking up and down his figure. He straightens immediately, resisting the instinct to salute her.

“Oreki-san,” she says after a taut pause. He almost tips over—his mind catches up to the fact that he’d been involuntarily leaning toward her.

“Y-Yes?” he answers. Nice save.

Chitanda Hana’s gaze seems to pierce him in the middle of his skull. “Will you protect Eru?”

Houtarou is flabbergasted by the question. It occurs to him again that, truthfully, he and Chitanda are not dating, and they never have been, and he has put no words to the sensation in his chest all at once rising and sinking when he looks at her, when he sees her smile, when she tells him that she thinks he’s special. Surely he can’t reply to a question so fraught with meaning, so solemn and urgent and true—surely, surely, he possesses no feelings to even begin to support an answer with conviction—

“Will you take care of her?” Chitanda Hana demands. “Even when none of us are left? Will you have faith in her, and trust her, and forgive her, and work to earn her forgiveness should you ever need it yourself?”

Houtarou’s heart has leaped up to shake at the top of his throat. He swallows, opening his mouth to answer, but nothing comes out.

“Do you love her?”

“I...”

“Oreki-san,” Chitanda Hana finishes, never once blinking, never once giving him the chance to escape the weight of the questions bearing down on him now, too heavy to shake off, “Are you willing to die for her?”

Houtarou gapes at Chitanda Hana, hands going slack at his sides, heart drumming out a war march against every frail part of him. All of the other women watch him with agog, expectant mouths, and all at once, with that question, the obscuring fog inside of Houtarou clears, dissipates, scattered by a summer breeze into far and unknown places. At the center of it all, in the spaces he could not see, is a single, unbreakable word.

“Yes.”

That’s right when Chitanda wanders back over with Kei and Kenji swinging from her arms and shrieking with laughter. Houtarou’s knees are quavering. He needs to sit down, but he can’t tear his eyes away from those of Chitanda Hana, which are now more terrifying than he ever could have imagined, now that he has bared himself to them with the utterance of one simple syllable.

“Hou-chan!” Chitanda chirps, oblivious to the clamoring of changes in the air around her. “I told Kei-chan and Ken-chan that you’re very good at hide-and-seek! Would you like to play?”

“Please, please!” Kei and Kenji chant in unison.

And then, miraculously, beautifully, Chitanda Hana’s stony scowl unravels. She’s grinning toothily at Houtarou now—or, well, as toothily as she can with so many teeth missing—and all of Chitanda’s aunts are whispering delightedly amongst themselves at the approval.

“Go and play with the children, Oreki-san,” Chitanda Hana says to him, chuckling. “You do look quite funny when you’re scared!”

“Hm?” Chitanda perks up, clearly beginning to cotton on to the fact that she’s missed something dreadfully important. “Baachan, what—?”

In the nick of time, Kei and Kenji break off from Chitanda and go scampering off down the opposite hallway, hollering challenges of hide-and-seek over their shoulders with matching impish grins. Chitanda whirls on Houtarou, beaming, eyes as bright as ever, and it only takes him a moment to quirk his lips just barely and nod, and within an instant, she’s gripping his wrist, leading him off on a merry, merry chase.

It doesn’t even tire him.

 

* * *

 

Every night is filled with the comfortable clamor of family dinners, and, with time, Houtarou grows more accustomed to them, even being so bold as to speak a few sentences at the third and fourth ones. During the mornings, when asked, he helps with making breakfast and cleaning up around the enormous house, and in the afternoons, if Chitanda Hana does not abscond with him to play several games of karuta, he and Chitanda work on their homework together (or try to, but Kenji and Kei have different plans more often than not).

May 4 comes, the final full day before the exodus on May 5, and Houtarou wakes expecting a celebration. Instead, the morning rituals proceed as usual, with everyone stating their plans for the afternoon—going to the festival in town, taking a hike, staying around the house to pack or help out, watching the baseball game—and no mention is made of the fact that it’s Chitanda’s birthday. Everyone is concerned with the fact that it’s their last day together, making preparations for the grand finale dinner, working hard to spend as much quality time as possible before they all have to part ways again.

Houtarou plays karuta with Chitanda Hana in the late morning. Chitanda had insisted that he not worry about helping with the dishes, as it’s his last day with the family; he’d reluctantly complied.

Chitanda Hana has beaten him every time, but she never gloats about it. “Sometimes these things take many tries, Oreki-san,” she tells him sagely, almost warmly, like she knows.

Houtarou can’t explain why the words are so comforting, so he watches the cards instead, head bowed, expression unreadable. Chitanda Hana seems to think his poker face is very amusing.

“Shy, aren’t you?” she comments. “I’m amazed she didn’t scare you off.”

Houtarou considers his next move, a little sweaty from the midday heat. Because he trusts this woman, for some peculiar reason, he returns, “I’m grateful that I didn’t let her.”

 

* * *

 

 

Chitanda vanishes at the end of dinner, just when all of the inebriated men are starting to bawl with sentimentality about the fact that they’ll all have to be apart again, and how truly important family is, and how lost they would be without these wonderful annual summer memories.

Houtarou goes after her. Not because he finds such things unpalatable, but because he thinks them exceeding of his typical range of feeling.

He finds her quickly—she’s seated out on the porch, facing the pond, barefoot, hair down. The lively crickets sound like the sea.

Houtarou considers leaving her be. It has become harder and harder to remind himself over these past few days that their closeness is feigned, and that boundaries are still firmly established (untouched) between them, truthfully, as they would be between friends.

“Houtarou?” she calls softly while he’s mulling these things over, startling him. She even keeps the name thing up when they’re in private. 

“Y-Yeah,” he stammers back, embarrassed at being caught.

Chitanda pats the space beside her. After a moment’s hesitation, Houtarou toes his slippers off and pads over to her, sitting carefully down with his legs dangling off the edge, unselfconsciously slouching.

“Have you had a nice time?” Chitanda inquires. Her voice is sweet and almost weightless.

Houtarou doesn’t even have to think about it. “Sure.”

Chitanda chuckles a little. “Can’t you do better than that?”

Houtarou rolls his eyes. Jeez, this girl is tiresome! “I’ve had a really nice time.” He pauses. “Eru.”

There is no longer the faintest trace of pink in her cheeks when he locks eyes with her and calls her so. Perhaps that’s something to be scared of? Houtarou doesn’t care. He won't bother dwelling on it. Fear is much more exhausting than satisfaction.

“I have, too,” she all but announces, setting her hands decisively on her knees and sitting up straight.

It occurs to him that, in some deeply buried undercurrent of those words, she’s putting more effort into the statement than she should. Then he remembers.

“Chitanda-san...” he murmurs, staring distantly up at the sky. “It’s your birthday.”

“Oh!” she cries, hands shooting up to clasp her cheeks in surprise. “I suppose it is, isn’t it? I completely forgot...”

“You forgot your own birthday?” Houtarou exclaims incredulously.

“It’s not all that strange,” Chitanda explains. Houtarou falters. Something in her gaze, now, seems resigned and a little sad. “Golden Week is always so busy... my birthday tends to be swept aside in the excitement.” She brightens, flashing him a genuine smile, eyes scrunched closed. “But I don’t mind! I have such a good time when everyone comes to visit, I don’t even miss it!”

Before Houtarou can fathom words—sounds, even—he starts to speak. Something about the way the moonlight sheaves across Chitanda’s face, the way that she accepts the forgetting of her seventeenth birthday with such little struggle, has made his heart turn over on itself. His hands itch for want of handing her something she can hold and keep (and drape with thoughts of him).

“You, ah...” He feels heat creeping, unbidden, onto his cheeks, and so he ducks his head, fixating on one of the statues beside the pond. “You said once that... in your family, you don’t give gifts to... to the people whom you’re really close to, so—” All of it scatters and dies in his throat. “Sorry.”

He doesn’t know why, but he’s about to promise her a grand present to make up for it, to promise her the moon, the farthest mountains, rubies and emeralds he’ll dig up with his bare hands, the most enormous expenditure of energy ever spent by a human being... but before he can voice such a silly thing, he’s bewildered to hear that, beside him, she’s started laughing.

It’s a very odd laugh, nothing like the dainty and reserved giggles she normally conceals safely behind a lifted hand. It reaches the very stars and tickles them. It tickles something inside of him, too, until it feels so feather-light as to float to the sun.

“Houtarou,” she manages to get out after a time, and when he dares to look at her, he goes slack—there are tears in her eyes, and her cheeks are pink, and he has never seen her beam so brightly at him. “I’m... you don’t know how happy—how happy that makes me—I—“

She’s back to laughing again, chortling, really, doubling over and clutching her stomach. Houtarou wonders unabashedly at her. Chitanda lets slip the smallest and most unexpected pieces of herself, sometimes, but they fill up the world around them so much that the sky starts to seem low and confining.

“I’m so happy,” she finally declares, wiping at her eyes and biting her lip as if to tamper down the joy on it. “I’m so very happy you’re here.”

A whole lot of fluttering goes on in Houtarou’s chest at that, but even more when she finishes, “I’ve never had such a nice birthday.”

 

* * *

 

 

On the last night, they go for a stroll around the grounds. All the rest of Chitanda’s family has left. Houtarou had seen each of them off with the rest of the household, firmly shaking the hands of her younger uncles and bowing to the older ones, braving a whole lot of fussing and tittering and teasing from her aunts. He had felt a little sorry to see them go, but not very much, truly—he had felt an inexplicable certainty that he would see them again soon.

Chitanda’s fingers are tangled in his. She’s watching the constellations above them with subdued admiration, and Houtarou is content enough to breathe in deeply every now and then to take in the early summer twilight smell. After a while, they come to a brief stop beside the garden, and Chitanda turns to face him from the side, violet eyes iridescent.

“We did a very good job, didn’t we, Houtarou?” she asks him, all quiet delight and contentment and something more, something he’s not bold enough yet to try understanding, smiling up at him with a look that he thinks she ought to reserve for full moons, or tall and lovely trees. She hasn’t let go of his hand.

They walk along the garden path together, and Houtarou can almost feel the summer starting around them, settling amongst the stars. He is a little braver now, and so he doesn’t look away from Chitanda like he used to—he holds his gaze on her even when she turns her attentions to the flowers and land around them, wondering if every forgotten fragment of spring somehow came together across time to create this face, these long lashes, this muted smile, these wide and wondering eyes.

“Yeah,” he says after a time, and maybe, just maybe, he feels his own lips start to quirk up the slightest bit, too. Maybe this is happiness. “I guess we did.”

 

* * *

 

 

Their faces both lean in at the same time, but Chitanda moves just slightly faster. Oreki Houtarou remembers the kiss for the rest of his life.

Her hands come to rest on his cheeks, framing his face, and when she beams up at him, there are tears in her eyes again. So sentimental.

“Oreki Houtarou,” she whispers, and nothing more, with such fondness and emotion that it really, truly makes him ache.

“I’m not really sure what to do now,” he confesses, in the same tone of voice that he always uses.

“Shh,” Eru hushes him, squeezing his cheeks just slightly and closing her eyes. “Houtarou... enjoy not knowing.” Her smile softens. “It’s a mystery, isn’t it? No...” A car whizzes by on the distant road. “An adventure.”

Houtarou has never been so scared or so happy in his life.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

  
“Ah, Hou-chan, could you hold this for a minute?” Eru asks him offhandedly in the Classics Club on Friday.

Houtarou glances up from his book to the vintage camera she has proffered to him. “Hm? Ah. Yeah. Sorry, Eru.”

It all but whacks him in the face, the sudden awareness—he woodenly creaks his head around to see Satoshi and Mayaka gawking at the both of them with identical looks of shock.

“H- _Hou_ -chan...?” Mayaka repeats, round-eyed, starting to tilt urgently forward.

“ _Eru_...?!” Satoshi adds, eyebrows sinking in impending determination.

Chitanda squeaks, hands flying up to cover her mouth as though she can yank the names back into it. Houtarou’s life and spirit leave him, and he sits there in his chair, one hand holding up the enormous flash bulb, the other rising with one finger in the air in some mad hope of delaying the inevitable.

“I can explain,” he says.

**Author's Note:**

> A shirime is a youkai with an eye in its anus and none on its face. Chitanda's grandmother has a wicked sense of humor.


End file.
